Do you ever stop to think about the impacts of the words you say?
Not the ones you said in the meeting earlier today, or the ones you said in that altercation with a co-worker or an argument with your spouse, but the ones you say every day without really thinking about them…The words put into your mind on a daily basis (especially the ones you speak quietly or inaudibly to yourself).
The fact is, words really do matter. What we say to ourselves and others directly impacts the way we perform. More important, over time those words shape our expectations of the outcomes we will realize. Here’s how.
Our subconscious mind never sleeps. It receives and registers messages all of the time. Everything from the words in the songs playing the background to the commercials that interrupt our favorite television shows, to the things we hear parents say to their misbehaving children in Walmart®…it all goes into our minds and impacts our thoughts, and ultimately our actions.
You see we get conditioned by the things we hear that register in our subconscious, and if we don’t actively work to remove them, they soon define us. Though it is not my intent to turn this into an indictment of anything specific in our culture, it is time we paid attention to this and took personal, if not collective, action to change it. The dialogue we hear each day, the music that enters our minds repeatedly, the messages we read on billboards….they all enter our subconscious and become part of our personal experience. And if the messages are put there often enough, they become our inherent beliefs.
If you are inclined to tune this message out or think it is an exaggeration, just think about it for a minute…depending upon your generation some of the examples that follow may not register immediately, but they illustrate the point: when we are repeatedly exposed to messages they become something we remember and believe, without even trying. See how many of these you can complete on the first try:
>> Winston tastes good like a…
>> I can’t believe I ate…
>> Tastes great…
>> Can you…
>> Two all beef patties…
You get the point. Because we’ve heard and seen the commercials for these products so often, their messages are engrained in our minds. We know that Winston tastes good like a ‘cigarette should’ (if you are over 40 that is); that I can’t believe I ate ‘the whole thing’; that when you hear ‘tastes great’ the next thing you’re likely to hear is ‘less filling;’ that the phrase can you is completed with ‘hear me now’, and that two all beef patties are accompanied by ‘special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun’.
Though we may or may not choose to act on any of those messages and purchase the associated products, there is a lesson to be learned when we realize how they crept into our brains. But far worse than the things that we randomly hear from marketers who want us to buy things are the messages we hear from our family and friends, and even more important, from our own mouths. Let’s look at a few common examples.
Consider the often spoken phrase ‘good luck.” It seems harmless enough. A family member waves goodbye as you leave for an interview, smiles, and says “good luck!” It is merely an innocent, caring comment on the surface. But at deeper level, the message is that you will need luck in order to perform well in the interview. The implication being that your knowledge, skill, and attitude will not carry the day, and that you must rely on some invisible random force in order to have any chance of success.
OK, maybe that seems a tad over the top. Many people believe strongly in the existence of luck, fate, or some other form of random cosmic events that impact the world and bring good fortune to some and misfortune to others. And it may even be true. But why don’t we put the more positive message out to the person…a message that reminds them that they can and will impact the outcome? Something like “do your best”–a phrase that expresses the same basic emotion, but in a way that reminds us the listener they have some control over the outcome they will we realize in their interview.
Or how about the question: ‘do you have to work tomorrow?’ Why do we always look at it as HAVING to work? The implication being that you have to do something over which you have no control, that someone else is making you do it, and that you will probably not enjoy it. But everyday in households across the country, people will refer to work as something they HAVE to do. Wonder how much better many of them might feel if they were asked: Do you GET to work tomorrow?
Another example, one that often comes from our own mouths, is the statement “with my luck,” followed by the identification of something that is inherently poised to go wrong and make our life more difficult, such as “with my luck, I will probably have a flat tire and miss the wedding.” What a ridiculous thing to say to yourself (or to allow someone else to say to you, i.e., ‘with your luck…’). Now if you believe in luck and you are really interested in attracting bad luck, by all means talk to yourself this way on a regular basis and encourage others to do the same. But if you’re a rational person who expects to experience good things in life, then stop saying such stupid things immediately!
The examples could continue, but the point has been made. When we says things like “I’m not very good at…” or “I can’t…” or “that’s just my luck” we are not serving ourselves well. In fact, we are programming ourselves for the exact outcomes we wish to avoid!
It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Therein lies the core message of this article…check the words you are saying to yourself everyday and the words you are allowing others to say to you and change them so they guide you to more positive outcomes.
ACTION ADVICE: Take positive action and intentionally change your dialogue with yourself and others. Stop affirming outcomes you don’t want, stop programming yourself to believe that luck is somehow in control of your destiny, and start positioning your mind to see the positive perspective on the things you get to do each day. And while you are at it, take a look at what you are hearing in the music you are listening to, what you are watching in movies and on TV, and what you are reading…those messages are also creeping in your mind and impacting you-whether you know it or not!
